Council celebrates new facility

Posted: Monday, July 25, 2005

By Kelly Proctorkelly.proctor@onlineathens.com

The Athens Community Council on Aging has faced three fires and 13 years of raising money, but the local non-profit will realize its hard-won dream today and break ground on a $2.4 million facility for Alzheimer's victims and the disabled.

A public celebration for the Frances & Upshaw Bentley Center for Elder Care will take place at 10 a.m. at the Council on Aging headquarters, 135 Hoyt St. off College Avenue. The new building will be located directly behind the council's headquarters.

The council, established in 1967, runs 13 services for the elderly and the disabled. Several of its programs reach outside Athens, spreading over a 12-county area. According to the council's annual report, services reached more than 27,000 people in 2004.

The new Center for Elder Care will house an adult day-care center and new offices for the transportation workers who drive seniors to errands and appointments.

The new building will more than double the center's daily client capacity, said Eve Anthony, director of the council's adult day-care center. A registered nurse and Alzheimer's support groups, both features of the old facility at 1774 Old W. Broad St., will move to the new building, and construction will create space for therapy rooms for physical and speech therapists.

A few rooms in the old headquarters will be renovated as well, with the addition of an on-site, commercial-grade kitchen for programs like Meals on Wheels.

The Center for Elder Care was designed according to the latest scientific findings, said Kathryn Fowler, the council's executive director. For example, new research shows that people with dementia need more daylight during the day to sleep at night, so the roof of the new building is designed to fill the room with sunlight.

There also will be rooms for one-on-one personal care and enclosed, walled gardens for people with Alzheimer's, Fowler said.

"We're trying to build a place that anyone can feel comfortable leaving mom and dad," she said.

Planning for the building has taken more than a decade. Through the years, donations and private money secured five acres for a building site.

The organization steadily saved money that the Athens-Clarke County government allocated through federal grants, eventually topping $1 million. The council on aging raised the rest - more than $1.2 million - from private foundations, individuals, churches and businesses. An eight-month fund-raising blitz culled nearly $700,000 from 400 public donations.

Although the council now has most of the money it needs, the organization still must raise $117,300 to avoid paying a mortgage on the new building, Fowler said.

The council hadn't always planned to build the Center for Elder Care from scratch. The organization's headquarters are housed in a renovated Southern Railway passenger station, built in 1913, and directors had planned to repair a rundown freight station nearby. However, a series of fires condemned the building in 1998. Now, the new center will sit where the railroad lines once intersected.

The Center for Elder Care will honor Frances and Upshaw Bentley, a prominent Athens couple.

Frances Bentley, a long-time volunteer with the council on aging, died last year due to a blood clot in the brain. On the morning of the last day she was alive, Bentley volunteered for the council, delivering meals to the disabled through the Meals on Wheels program.

Upshaw Bentley, who served as Athens mayor from 1976 to 1979, has worked at Fortson, Bentley and Griffin, an Athens law firm, for more than 55 years. Bentley also has served on the University of Georgia Board of Trustees and was a member of the UGA Foundation.

He was president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and was a 50-year board member of the Athens YMCA.

Construction for the Frances and Upshaw Bentley Center for Elder Care is scheduled to be finished in fall 2006.

Council on Aging

For more information on the Frances & Upshaw Bentley Center for Elder Care, call The Athens Community Council on Aging at (706) 549-4850. The facility is located at 135 Hoyt St.